Winner of Denise Verrico's giveaway, plus upcoming Suburban Vampire contests you won't want to miss

The winner of Denise Verrico's contest for a Cara Mia poster is Christy Tillery French. Congratulations! Please send your snail mail address to suburbanvamp AT gmail.com.

Be sure to check out my Denise Verrico interview if you missed it. A big thanks to Denise for visiting Suburban Vampire.

In the mood for more giveaways? I've just posted a preview of October at Suburban Vampire. Find out who'll be sitting on my comfy suburban couch for a chat and offering Halloween treats.  There's also still time to win a copy of Jasper Kent's historical vampire novel, Twelve, which SFX calls "good vampire-hunting fun."

October at Suburban Vampire

I know September hasn't yet left us, but I'm excited to share my lineup of October guests.  Each week I'll be spotlighting a different author and running a giveaway, plus there will be new Music Mondays and info about the Vampire Film Festival and other vampiric Halloween events.

The October guest list:

October 5: Sophie Littlefield, Edgar Award-winning author of an upcoming young adult zombie novel, Banished.
October 12: Marta Acosta, Mistress of Vampire Wire and creator of the Casa Dracula series, including the brand-new Haunted Honeymoon.
October 19: David Michael Slater, author of the young adult Sacred Books series.
October 26: Jonathan Maberry and Janice Gable Bashman, authors of Wanted Undead or Alive: Vampire Hunters and Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil.

While you're waiting, take advantage of the contests accompanying my most recent September interviews; they're still open. Today is the last day to enter to win a book poster for Denise Verrico's Cara Mia, and you have until October 7 to try for a copy of Jasper Kent's Twelve.

Interview and contest: Jasper Kent, author of TWELVE

"Good vampire-hunting fun." --SFX

Joining me today is Jasper Kent, whose Napoleonic-era vampire novel, Twelve, is now available in the U.S. from Pyr. The Times calls Twelve "an accomplished, entertaining blend of historical fiction and dark fantasy."

About the novel:
Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, a captain in the army of Tsar Alexander I, is sworn to defend Russia against the onslaught of Napoleon's Grande Armée in the autumn of 1812. He joins forces with a band of twelve Wallachian mercenaries, whose zeal and success in slaughtering the French invaders seem too good to be true.

Soon, Aleksei unearths the gruesome secret behind the Wallachians' abilities and discovers that they make little distinction between Frenchman or Russian. His fight becomes not simply one against Napoleon, but against a far more dangerous enemy.

SUBURBAN VAMPIRE: Welcome, Jasper. The specific type of vampires you've chosen for Twelve are the voordalak of Russia. Do voordalak traits and legends differ much from those of vampires we're familiar with in English-speaking tales?

JASPER KENT: You got me. The fact is, I can’t really claim that the vampires in Twelve are an authentic representation of a particularly Russian folklore. It’s certainly the case that the majority of what we understand to be vampires come from Slavic myth (that which isn’t the pure invention of two centuries of Western authors), but all I’ve done is create the monsters that I wanted for my story, and then made a connection between them and a Russian creature. Many of the specifics of the voordalak and the oopir (a more Ukrainian variant), which I haven’t used, are quite interesting: some of them can only be abroad between noon and midnight (rather than the more traditional hours of darkness); others die if you stab them through the heart, but are revived if you stab them a second time.

SV: Twelve kicks off The Danilov Quintet, a series of five novels that span Russian history from the French invasion of 1812 to the revolutions of 1917. You state on your website, JasperKent.com, that a painting of Napoleon Bonaparte inspired the story. How did the infamous French leader's face lead to an epic tale of war and vampires?

JASPER: The painting in question was Bonaparte sur le pont d'Arcole by Antoine-Jean Gros. In my print he seems a little more wan than in the copies online, but he’s certainly a lot thinner than in his later years. It just struck me that he looked vaguely vampiric, and that led me to think of vampires in the Napoleonic Wars. My first thought was to write a story set in the Peninsula War, but the idea of the cold of the retreat from Moscow soon made me settle on the Russian campaign. I later noticed (and perhaps did subconsciously at the time) a similarity of the painting with Ilya Glazunov’s illustration of Raskolnikov, as shown on the cover of the Norton Critical Edition of Crime and Punishment, which, given Raskolnikov’s self-association with Napoleon, may have been deliberate. That certainly could have been another link that drew me to Russia.

SV: Were you interested in vampires before writing Twelve? Do you have any favorite undead characters from literature and/or film?

JASPER: My fundamental interest in vampires comes from Christopher Lee and the Hammer films. Looking back at them now, I can see so many faults, but they did establish in my mind the fundamental idea of the vampire as an historical character. From that I read Stoker’s original novel – which has never been successfully filmed as far as I’m concerned – and loved it. Two TV series – Buffy and Ultraviolet – in later life persuaded me just how much interesting stuff you can get out of the undead. And then there’s always the 2000AD comic strip Fiends on the Eastern Front from the early eighties, which clearly had an influence.

SV: Your background includes physics and software engineering. Do you feel the logical, scientific side of your brain is an asset or a hindrance in creating works of fiction?

JASPER: Both. When writing stories to which the science is a specific feature, then I’m in a good place to be accurate, but that’s not always a benefit. For instance, one of my unpublished novels, Sifr, is about cryptography, which I understand pretty well at a mathematical level. That means I can be quite accurate, but the downside is that I can then go into more depth than many readers are interested in.

In more general terms an understanding of physics should always be of benefit to any author, since physical things happen, even in fantasy stories. But even then, writing something which is physically correct is not of interest to the reader if it contradicts their perception of what is physically correct. How many times have you seen them shoot the lock off a door in a movie? It’s virtually impossible to achieve, but it’s so well established in the mind of the viewer that it’ll take more than me and a degree in physics to fix the misconception.

On another level, in terms of the process of writing, I find the experience of software engineering quite useful. Writing a 150,000-word novel is a big project and it needs planning and organization, even when there’s only one person doing it. I find many of the techniques I’d use to plan a software project equally applicable to writing a novel.

SV: Did your passion for history first show up when you started writing Twelve, or has that long been one of your many interests?

JASPER: I’ve always been interested in history, though until I started writing, not specifically Russian history. My only knowledge of the retreat from Moscow came from histories of Napoleon, which inevitably give a French point of view. Even now that I’m specifically looking for it, it’s hard to find things from a Russian viewpoint if there is a western angle. Thus for Thirteen Years Later, when I needed to research the Decembrist Uprising, which was a purely internal affair, I could find a number of translations of Russian texts. But now that I’ve moved on to the Crimean War, which is part of British history too, it becomes much harder to find a Russian point of view.

SV: You live with six rats, and Twelve’s prologue involves a chilling Russian folk tale involving rats and monkeys. Do your rodent companions inspire your darker side as much as Napoleon's portrait did...or do you feel rats are undeserving of their negative reputations?

JASPER: As it happens, I’d never even thought of keeping rats when I wrote the prologue to Twelve. I don’t think I’d ever shared the general aversion to them, but I didn’t learn how adorable they were until I was introduced to them by my girlfriend, Helen. Now that I keep rats, I find I have to work hard when I’m writing to make them anything but cute.

SV: The second novel in The Danilov Quintet, Thirteen Years Later, debuted in the UK last spring and will be released by Pyr February 2011. Will there be more voordalak in the second installment, or do you have other horrific creatures showing up in that one?

JASPER; No – it’s voordalaki all the way for me. I am tempted to write a completely non-supernatural novel in the series, since it’s perfectly possible that my characters could engage in utterly thrilling adventures without meeting any kind of monster, but I think readers would feel let down. On the other hand, I do try to apply the rule that an author should only make a single change from reality. If you have a specific, planned reason to write a Dracula versus The Mummy story, then that’s okay, but I don’t think it works to add new monsters just to revive a flagging series.

SV: Thanks so much for visiting Suburban Vampire, Jasper. Best of luck to you, the Quintet, and, of course, the rats.

Contest Rules:
Prometheus Books has generously offered a free copy of Twelve to a Suburban Vampire visitor.  In honor of Bonaparte's sickly image that inspired Jasper Kent's creativity, head to the comments section and answer the following question: Which historical figure or celebrity (past or present) do you think most resembles a vampire?  A winner will be drawn from the entries on the morning of THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7.  U.S. entries only.

To learn more about Jasper Kent and his novels, head to JasperKent.com.

No Music Monday this week

I'm in the middle of some of my own book revisions right now, so I need to skip this week's Music Monday.  As always, if you need to find ideas for vampire songs, head to my Vampire Music Mondays Page.

Be sure to visit again tomorrow, when I'll be chatting with author Jasper Kent, author of Twelve.  Yes, a giveaway will be involved.

Winner of D. Scott Meek's DYING LIGHT

The winner of D. Scott Meek's dystopian vampire novel, Dying Light, is Lucky's Luna. Congratulations! Please send your snail mail address to suburbanvamp AT gmail.com.

Thanks to Get Red PR for offering the contest, and thanks to everyone who entered by answering the following question: In Dying Light, vampires are living side-by-side with humans. If that were the case in our current world, which career field do you hope isn't hiring vampires? The top choice was phlebotomist.

Interview with VAMPIRE MOB creator Joe Wilson

He’s a hitman and a vampire, and he just found out his
mother-in-law is moving in, for eternity.

Joining me today is Joe Wilson, writer, director, and creator of the witty and addictive series Vampire Mob. Joe was kind enough to chat with me about everything from vampire mothers-in-law from hell to jars of celebrity air.

SUBURBAN VAMPIRE: Welcome, Joe. What originally inspired you to merge the worlds of vampires and mobsters?

JOE WILSON: I was working as a private investigator in the intellectual property field (trademarks, patents, that kinda thing), and I was investigating something that included the term ‘mob.’ It was July of last year and the movie Public Enemies was out with Johnny Depp. I joked that mafia stories never seem to go away for very long and vampire stories don’t seem to be going away any time soon; where was the vampire mob story?

I originally started cooking Vampire Mob as a short film and talked to John Colella and Reamy Hall about it. We had worked together on a short called “The Swear Police,” which won at the Los Angeles Comedy Shorts Film Festival, and I was planning on making another short and wanted to work with both of them because they are kickass actors.

SV: Did the hilarious plotline of gearing up to deal with an immortal mother-in-law come to you early on, or was that one of those ingenious types of moments that hit you as you were writing?

JOE: While I was working on it as a short film, I also wrote a one-act play, which was performed twice at the Ruskin Group Theater in Santa Monica, CA, and was based on Don, but at the point he wasn’t yet a hitman, and his mother-in-law was not part of the story. It was called “Craig’s Other List” and was a scene I never planned on shooting: a meeting between Don and the person who could make him a vampire.

As I kept cooking it, I saw the story was too big for a one-off short. Both the ideas of Don working as a hitman and his mother-in-law moving in came once I knew I had a bigger palette in terms of a way to tell the story as a web series and that I could actually make it, in scale and budget.

SV: You've assembled a highly impressive cast. Tell us a little about who you have on board?

JOE: Thank you! I am amazed I got to work with this cast!

Don the hitman/vampire is played by John Colella, a Goodman School of Drama grad, who is an amazing actor I’ve seen in many plays, and I also worked with him on my award-winning short “The Swear Police” (http://www.swearpolice.com). Reamy Hall is Annie, Don’s wife, and she always blows me away any time I see her work, mainly in dramas, including a guest starring role on Criminal Minds last season - she’s really funny!

Kirsten Vangsness, who you might know as Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds, plays Annie’s sister, Laura, and she rocks both the drama and the comedy in Vampire Mob! Marcia Wallace is known to some as the voice of Mrs. Krabappel on The Simpsons and others as Carol on The Bob Newhart Show, and she plays the newly minted vampire mother-in-law. I wrote the part with her in mind and can’t believe she said yes! Chris Mulkey you might know from Twin Peaks, 24, and soon on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, and he's so funny and bizarre as Marty Five, a blood dealer who works out of a castle (we actually shot in a castle!).

Elizabeth Beckwith plays Don’s chiropractor (yes, a vampire with “back trouble”) and is a stand-up comedian, actress, and published author (Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation); she’s funny on paper, too! Jim Roof was in “The Swear Police” and is hilarious as Rob, Don’s brother-in-law.  He’s also a writer/director (check out “Murderabilia” on YouTube). Andrea Cansler, who plays Miss Martini, a vampire/hooker, is a really funny writer/actress and a member of The Groundlings Sunday Company. And Cris D’Annunzio is Cadillac Frank, a mob boss, and he’s also an actor/writer with a feature called Chasing 3,000, which also stars Ray Liotta.

SV: Tell us about yourself--the man behind Vampire Mob. Who is Joe Wilson, and how did your past experiences in filmmaking and comedy come to play in creating this series?

JOE: I am not married to a former CIA agent and have never heckled the president!

I started out as a photographer and had work published in newspapers and magazines, which definitely comes in handy shooting Vampire Mob. I was a mixed-media installation artist and often used video, including one installation that had thirty televisions in it, where I learned a little about editing. I wrote and performed a one-man show, and that was a crash course in everything: acting, producing, writing, directing, theatre lighting, sound design, video, publicity, and grant writing. Of course, I have paid the bills waiting tables and bartending, where I had a few regulars who were involved in organized crime.

Writing and performing stand up is probably the best school for comedy there is because it doesn’t get any simpler than you, words, and an audience. I’ve written movies, plays, short films, and web series in the past, all of which were extremely helpful in making VMob. The P.I. gig definitely taught me about human beings, character, motivations, and dialogue, and it also was a place where acting and improv came in handy!

Five years ago I auctioned a jar of celebrity air - air captured within proximity to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.  It was done as a joke, but I really did go to a movie premiere with a jar and a camera and did it. That was a great experience in seeing the power of the Internet – it made international news on television, newspapers, and was even on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

SV: You've decided to use the "view-ransom" method of debuting episodes. When an episode reaches a certain number of views, the next episode gets released. It's a fantastic idea for generating buzz (and a creative tie-in for a hit-man series). Do you feel it's made a huge difference in spreading the news about the series?

JOE: Glad you like the idea! I stole it from Stephen King (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,100057,00.html) and Greg Stolze , who had both used it for books in the past, but I hadn’t seen it done with a web series.

I think it’s the only way this show could find an audience without a marketing budget or any company out promoting the show. I also think it’s the best way we all find out about shows and movies, recommendations from friends!

SV: I always ask interviewees for their favorite vampire characters, but I love your mother-in-law angle so much that I'm going to make an exception. Instead, who are some of your favorite mothers-in-law from hell characters? And could Vampire Mob's Virginia easily take them on in a mother-in-law smackdown?

JOE: That’s a good one!

I’d have to go with Doris Robert’s character, Marie Barone, in Everybody Loves Raymond for one and Tony Soprano’s mother, Livia, played by the late, great Nancy Marchand in The Sopranos.

Virginia could easily take on both of them! What will be interesting is to see if she can take on Don the hitman’s mother in season two!

SV: Will there be a second season?

JOE: Yes!

Lots of fun things in season two, including the arrival of Don’s mom, who will be played by an actress I am really psyched to work with, who we haven’t announced yet, but will soon. We will also meet Don’s priest, who has known him since he was a kid. We’re pursuing an actor for that role, and if he says yes, it will be yet another impossible thing about this show that actually happened!

We’re trying to raise the budget to shoot it right now on Kickstarter.com.

We used ten-year-old video cameras that don’t shoot HD and barely made it through season one, so we’re hoping we can tell season two using better gear.

SV: Thanks so much for joining me at Suburban Vampire, Joe. Keep on entertaining us with Vampire Mob's sharp and deliciously dark sense of humor that instructs us on everything from the benefits of not eating garlic to the use of the term MILILF.

JOE: Thank you and thanks for supporting our show and independent TV!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To watch Vampire Mob, head to VampireMob.com.  And to help the series' second season get underway, head to kickstarter.com. The project will only be funded if at least $10,000 is pledged by Friday, Oct 29.

Interview and contest: Denise Verrico, author of the Immortyl Revolution series

Joining me today is author Denise Verrico, who just released Twilight of the Gods, the second novel in her Immortal Revolution series. Denise is offering a giveaway to help celebrate the new book, so be sure to check out contest details at the end of our chat.

SUBURBAN VAMPIRE: Welcome to Suburban Vampire, Denise.  You've created an intricate plot with the Immortyl Revolution series. I know squeezing one's novel into a few sentences can be torture for a writer, but in a nutshell, what are these stories about?

DENISE: Book One is the prelude to the revolution. Mia and Kurt are locked up in a biotech lab in California. The story that she tells deals with becoming a vampire and her struggle to survive as a modern woman in an ancient culture. She and Kurt strike the first blow for freedom by stealing their masters' secrets and taking them to science. In Book Two, Twilight of the Gods, Kurt rises to become the rebel leader. Mia and Kurt's relationship faces challenges from their followers, the war they're fighting with their enemy Gaius, and the intro of a third partner, Arturo.

SV: Kick-ass female protagonists seem to dominate urban fantasies, but you also throw in a strong male lead to work alongside your heroine. Tell us a little about Mia Disantini and Kurt Eisen.

DENISE: I always liked the Thin Man stories with Nick and Nora Charles, that kind of witty, working relationship between two smart people. Not that these books are anything like that, but Mia and Kurt are perfect foils for one another. She's brusque, opinionated, passionate, headstrong and fiercely loyal. Kurt is thoughtful, compassionate, logical, stubborn, and charismatic. She's a talker. He's quiet. She's a fighter. He's a diplomat. She doesn't trust others. Kurt wants to believe the best of those who follow him. Both share a deep sense of justice and a desire to right wrongs. Mia is definitely the kick-ass variety, but Kurt is more of a politician. He's not your alpha male type, but he can kick some serious butt when the need arises. They have a deep love and respect for one another. In view of their potential lifespan, the relationship is open, but they are sometimes prone to jealousy. These are not uncomplicated teenagers, but a woman and man who have a lot of baggage to cart around through eternity. Kurt was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany and lost his entire family. He made what he considers a Faustian bargain to survive. Mia lost her parents young and was enslaved by her master, Ethan, for fifty years.

SV: How did the original ideas for the series first come to you?

DENISE: I had a dream about a female vampire. I'd never read a book about one at the time. My husband suggested I really deal with the fact that my protagonist was a woman and the implications of being both female and a vampire. Then I got interested in biotechnology and came up with the idea of a race to harness immortality. The revolution came to be when I created a multi-layered society that enslaved three fourths of their population. Kurt grew into this charismatic figure to the downtrodden. It was his idea entirely. He decided to take the series this way. Characters sometimes have a mind of their own.

SV: Your novels offer a science fiction twist on the vampire genre. Have you been a longtime sci-fi fan? Any favorite authors?

DENISE: Truthfully, I watch more sci fi than I read. On TV I loved Star Trek in its various incarnations, Firefly, and Dr. Who. There are a lot of great sci-fi movies that I've seen. Books I've liked include The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Tripods, 2001, and I Am Legend. The sci fi in my series is more of the biological type rather than technological. Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is a favorite of mine. I love Ursula K. Le Guin's books, particularly The Left Hand of Darkness, because I'm interested in gender and sexuality issues.

SV: What first sparked your interest in vampires?

DENISE: I was a big fan of the TV series Dark Shadows as a child in the late sixties. I used to rush home from school to watch Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, the vampire. I got to visit Mr. Frid's home in the eighties when a friend of mine was his personal assistant. He lived on Gramercy Park in New York at the time. As a tribute to him, I have Mia living on Gramercy at one point.

SV: One reader review says of your first Immortyl Revolution novel, Cara Mia, "Horror readers will find it horrific. Romance readers will swoon. Paranormal romance readers will say, 'Finally, something with soul.'" Were you concerned about fitting into a specific genre while you were writing?

DENISE: No. When I first started Cara Mia I'd read Anne Rice, Fred Saberhagen, Bram Stoker, Richard Matheson, and some other authors' vampire stories. I really didn't discover urban fantasy until a few years ago when I read a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. Since then I've read others in the genres of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. I did a lot of looking into older vampire stories and legends to figure out what I liked and how my story would make new rules. The great thing about speculative fiction is that you can change the rules, as long as you stick to the ones you create for your world. Immortyl Revolution is urban fantasy, but there is a strong romantic subplot. I set out to tell a story about a person, whether they be “human” or not, and you can't tell a story of a person's life without some romantic element. Nor do I think can you tell a story about vampires without some horror in the mix. If being a vampire is so great, then everyone would want to be one. Where then is the conflict for your hero or heroine? My main concern is to create flesh and blood characters and throw some major conflicts at them. I do tend to write how big events affect the everyday lives of my characters. The backstage story is often the most interesting to me. Then I shake things up by adding this biological sci fi into the mix.

SV: You were a member of The Oberon Theatre Ensemble in NYC, with whom you acted, directed, and wrote plays. Did preparing for roles as an actor help you figure out ways to develop your characters in these novels?

DENISE: Absolutely. As an actor one is taught to flesh out the skeleton of a character that is given by the playwright. There are clues given, but it is up to the actor to come up with a complete back story for that character, his or her mannerisms, likes, dislikes, deeply held beliefs, and relationships to the other characters. I was taught to keep a character notebook. This tool is still valuable to me. As a writer I have to squeeze into my characters' skins to really make them come to life. Acting is all about motivation and conflict. Improvisation and writing plays also have helped me to understand rising and falling action and dialogue.

SV: Can you give us any hints about the next book in the series, Fearful Symmetry?

DENISE: Fearful Symmetry switches POV to the irreverent person of Cedric MacKinnon, a nineteen-year-old, adept of the ancient arts. An adept is an Immortyl temple dancer/musician/courtesan of the chief elder's court. It takes place mostly in India. I needed an observer within the inner sanctum of Immortyl power to move the saga along. This book will be the sexiest, because of Cedric's profession, but the sex isn't pornographic in its depiction. My intent is to show a society where those like Cedric are used political pawns. This story veers off the sci-fi bent a bit and deals more with intrigue, vampire politics, and sexual politics. Book Four, Ratopia will bring Cedric to New York to team up with Kurt and Mia. Mia will again take up the narrative.

SV: Last, but not least, in your bio you state that you "enjoy climbing to heights of four-hundred-plus feet at speeds exceeding one-hundred-twenty miles per hour" on your favorite roller coasters. Which is your top favorite coaster?

DENISE: My favorite steel coaster is Millennium Force at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio: 310 feet tall and top speed of 93 MPH. It's like flying! My favorite wooden coaster is The Beast at King's Island in Cincinnati.

SV: Thanks so much for joining me at Suburban Vampire, Denise. Best wishes to you and the Immortyl Revolution series.

DENISE: Thanks to you, Catherine! I'm happy to have been your guest.

To learn more about Denise's novels, head to www.immortylrevolution.blogspot.com, www.deniseverricowriter.webs.com, Fans of Denise Verrico Facebook Page, and twitter.com/deniseverrico. She'll be listing updates on the upcoming ebook versions of her novels at her sites.

CONTEST RULES:

Denise is offering a signed 16- by 20-inch Cara Mia book cover poster--a lobby card type suitable for framing. In honor of Denise's love of thrilling rides and stories, go to the comments section, tell us your favorite roller coaster, and you'll be entered into the drawing. U.S. and Canadian entries only, please.

DEADLINE: Thursday, September 30, 2010.